After five nights (probably one too many) and nearly taking root, we’re leaving Madrigal de la Vera and travelling a modest 175kms or so into Extremadura to Alcuéscar.
Francine had had enough of cramped campsites in/near towns and was lusting after the countryside. It almost seems as though, the further we go, the smaller the pitches become. Burgos suffered from punters failing to understand the pitch markers, and from no hedges marking boundaries making everything feel a bit haphazard. Camping Don Quijote at Salamanca [left] had pitches of 70m2 max, if you were lucky. Then, in Complejo La Mata at Madrigal de la Vera [right] I calculated the actual pitch size at 50m2 – ours was about 9m/10m x 5m tops. The saving grace here was that the site was so underutilized that our surrounding pitches were empty and it felt quite luxurious, as long as you avoided the shanty town of permanents. In between all those pairs of trees in the picture are other pitches. At the height of the season, this would be unbearable but now, it was quite civilized.
Francine just heard of someone (via Farcebook) who, having booked for January in the south of Spain, had just been told they’d get a pitch of 6m x 4m – they have to be effin’ joking.
Francine got no argument from me, who really doesn’t do towns and cities anyway. What she found was a camper vans only site, run by a Dutch couple, with just eight pitches and within walking distance [about 2 mls/3 kms] of Alcuéscar. The reviews sounded fantastic; actually given what we’d already seen, unbelievably fantastic. With so few pitches, she sent an email to book and confirmed that they had room for us. They did, so off we set.
Our journey took us over an interesting cross-country route to begin with. Leaving the Gredos mountains behind us, the land was almost instantly flat. Sometimes, we passed fenced, golden land with scattered, quite low-level trees, that reminded me of Africa. Then the scenery would change, the trees would disappear and we were passing large swathes of open golden land that was reminiscent of outback Australia. Then we’d be back in Africa.
Eventually we hit the almost inevitable autovia and just trudged along it with little in the way of interest. That got us close to our destination and we were soon approaching the campsite, La Tierre Verde, up a very gravelly track. Reception was open between 12:00 and 14:00, and later in the afternoon from 17:00, so we had to time our arrival. We were here at 13:00. Good so far.
Ringing the bell was met with resounding silence. There was a note on the door saying they’d had to go out for business and giving a phone number. Francine called it and we were told to pick our own pitch. With only one other unit on site, we had a good choice. We got Frodo levelled and settled but had to wait for Sr. Dutch-Owner to hook us up to the electricity. In the interim, we fired up the fridge on gas, just to keep the beer and white wine cool.
Given what we’ve seen thus far, this really is luxurious. At this end of the season, the land is very scrubby but and at last we have a selection of birds to entertain us. Catching them on camera may prove tricky ‘cos they seem a bit flighty.
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